ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead & Reinforcements, version 1.59 - Patch released

[solidsnake2384 10]

(sigh)....ill try out the official patch. Im new to manually installing patches. Do I just put the file in directory?

[galzohar 31]

It's an improvement this time that Steam users are able to patch without waiting for the late steam update, however if some people are having problems with it it's still wrong. Also, if there are problems with Steam, why are Steam users recommended to wait for a Steam update that may or may not come?

I really don't mind manually updating over Steam auto-updating. In fact I actually prefer it due to the smaller download size. However so far every patch I wasn't really able to tell if/when an update will be properly released on Steam, and that had been quite an annoyance. Hopefully in the future you can keep Steam users up to speed about what is going on and whether or not we should just update with the regular exe, because so far every time we had to either guess or wait quite a while for some kind of an official announcement. If you can't fix the Steam/Valve problems, you can at least inform us of the problems and how to work around them.

[solidsnake2384 10]

I just manually installed the patch on Steam. It works...so far. :)

[nobrainer 0]

I have win7 64-bit.

Bith A2 and A2:OA with DLC BAF and PMC all from Steam.

Tried to use the patch from arma2.com 1.59, but it said I don't have A2:OA innstalled. A2 is still 1.08. I have checked that the registry still contains the keys.

When I try to start A2:OA it tries to install BAF and PMC, but I get some errors. Forgot to take napshots of it, but now even clean A2:OA won't start up.

Just so you know.

get these messages in rpt

Version 1.57.76815

Check failed, sizes are different

Check failed, sizes are different

Item str_disp_server_control listed twice

Error 20 reading file 'baf\addons\shapur_baf.pbo'

ErrorMessage: Cannot open file 'baf\addons\shapur_baf.pbo'

Version 1.57.76815

Check failed, unable to open file: c:\steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead\PMC\desktop.ico

Item str_disp_server_control listed twice

Error 20 reading file 'pmc\addons\missions2_pmc.pbo'

ErrorMessage: Cannot open file 'pmc\addons\missions2_pmc.pbo

I have tried to start A2 three times now, and now I can start A2:CO again. All with the "old" versions.

Will try to patch again., to see if all fails again

Hmm...

Had to try what happened if I installed the patch again. Now it says "OK", but no upgrade on A2. But now I got A2:OA to 1.59.79384. This error message

Downloading A2 update and see if thats makes all ok.

OK, after installing A2 patch, started up A2.

Then I got both A2 and A2:OA updated to latest versions on steam.

I just had to do everything twice to make it work.

Edited April 3, 2011 by NoBrainer

[sickboy 13]

;1890013']Have you tried it Sickboy?

No Steam here, but I wouldn't recommend installing the patch if I didn't know 10's of people who have Steam and succesfully use the patch.

Why not try it, seems better than waiting days/weeks isn't it?

[ben748 10]

I take back the unedited post on here, last night it wasn't OA saying it wasn't found, just tried it now and it felt like working, patcher just seems a bit buggy.

Edited April 3, 2011 by ben748

[tpw 2315]

Yes I have noticed the flickering LOD things again like we had part way through the betas.

I get it most obvious on Proving Grounds .. the dead trees will stay low LOD close and flicker into high, also scoping onto the far farm the building will misshape slightly like the LOD is not sure to be far or near quality version.

If I pan around and stop still and just slowly 360 the flickering is abvious.

Need to test more on other maps. I have my graphics level textures to normal as well as vid mem.

Anyone with MPC go into Proving grounds and scope around and walk in the middle of the map, scope into buildings, how does it look?

I'll also chime in with the increased LOD flickering, which raised its ugly head at about the same time that the "FPS drop when scoping" issue was addressed in recent betas. It is now happening to some extent on all maps. On the excellent ToraBora map, there is really noticeable and distracting tree and rock LOD switching. Same as proving grounds, just rotating the player by a few degrees, or taking one step forward, is enough to get the LODs switching. It happens regardless of video settings.

Unfortunately there always seems to be some tradeoff involved with updates. 1.59 feels very smooth and has a lot of obvious improvements, but the LOD switching is a real step backwards.

[Dwarden 1125]

can you provide the TB map video of the switching ?

also which of previous betas was ok ?

[tpw 2315]

Sure thing dwarden. I'm just about to head off to work but will post a few example vids for you tonight. I'll have a play with my beta collection and try to pinpoint when things changed.

[ricoadf 0]

1.59 has had some good improvements, the AI pilots seem to finally be a threat again and sofar I haven't seen the AI walking a circles (a very good thing). However it's brought in other issues.

First off the disabling of alt+F4 has proven to be anoying, the 'feature' is a downgrade rather than upgrade, however the bigger issue is transparent grass (or pixel grass as some people see it). Heres a screenshot:

As you can see in the pics the grass is semi transparent, which looks worse when theres smoke behind it. From what I've heard its to improve system performance? Well if thats the case it's made the game have less immersion and look silly for a few fps that aren't even noticable (game runs great already on my system). Whatever the reason for the grass it needs fixing, it looks rediculas.

It's a real shame that the patch has taken 1 step forward then another step back, especially since the game was almost perfect only 2 patches ago (not including beta patches).

I hope to see the fixes in the next patch amongst others, I'll post anymore bugs I find. There's been some good progress here, and I hope to see it continue, the complaints are only to let BIS know where improvements are needed :)

[Tonci87 163]

@RicoADF Did you try tweaking your AToC Setting?

[ricoadf 0]

AToC? I haven't tweaked anything since I had ArmA setup.

[tpw 2315]

can you provide the TB map video of the switching ?

also which of previous betas was ok ?

OK I've grabbed 30 seconds of footage from Tora Bora. No mods, just a single player in the editor. Pay attention to the small pines about 50m in front of the player. Notice how as I rotate +/- 15 degrees they start LOD switching. As I move closer to them, eventually they stop switching, and trees further in the distance do it instead.

I've uploaded the fraps video converted to an mpeg4 avi with mencoder under linux.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20189225/torabora2.avi

I'm working on finding out which betas are OK, will post that shortly.

[ScareCroweb 10]

As you can see in the pics the grass is semi transparent, which looks worse when theres smoke behind it. From what I've heard its to improve system performance? Well if thats the case it's made the game have less immersion and look silly for a few fps that aren't even noticable (game runs great already on my system). Whatever the reason for the grass it needs fixing, it looks rediculas.

you say barely noticable fps changes... well your clearly not thinking about the guys with minimum required hardware, cause most of the guys I know with minimum specs are now very happy so I say this patch is a goodwill towards people with low-end computers.. and I respect that. Myself I have a medium computer and I can still see that the improvement in fps is barely noticable but if this is making a big deal of improvement to others why should I complain?

the game looks awesome and the grass is a useless thing anyway. only for eyecandy and I dont care much for eyecandy over realism anyway

[liquidpinky 11]

AToC? I haven't tweaked anything since I had ArmA setup.

It is part of the new patch, it will have added it into your cfg, you need to go in and change it to 0 if it isn't already.

BIS should have put a warning about it in the read me of the patch.

[Beagle 684]

There seems to be some refusal to upgrade...still more than half of the public serves online run 1.57...!

[old_painless 182]

Just wanted to chime in among all the Steam misery and praise BI for improving the old stock missions. Playtested the patch in Trial by Fire and it had new content, behaved better, my units used cover better, was more balanced. Nice!

[polecat.uk 11]

Just like to thank everyone that worked on the patch;)

I had problems when i first installed, but that was down to AToC, i set that back to (0) and the games running great on my setup, feels like a big improvment

[ricoadf 0]

It is part of the new patch, it will have added it into your cfg, you need to go in and change it to 0 if it isn't already.

BIS should have put a warning about it in the read me of the patch.

Ah thankyou, testing now :)

Definently good if its just a setting change.

you say barely noticable fps changes... well your clearly not thinking about the guys with minimum required hardware, cause most of the guys I know with minimum specs are now very happy so I say this patch is a goodwill towards people with low-end computers.. and I respect that. Myself I have a medium computer and I can still see that the improvement in fps is barely noticable but if this is making a big deal of improvement to others why should I complain?

the game looks awesome and the grass is a useless thing anyway. only for eyecandy and I dont care much for eyecandy over realism anyway

Well my system isn't some super gaming rig, however I have no issue with the game being optimised and settings put in to reduce strain on the lower end machines (I have mine set on medium, even tho it can support high, Im not addicted to graphics I just found the grass anoying) as long as those that don't like it can chose otherwise, which it appears we can so thank you BIS :)

Edited April 4, 2011 by RicoADF

[R0adki11 3949]

Got to say this patch is great, the graphic tweaks actually allow me to run the game in very high for once. Though in MP i use Normal or Low as graphics arent as important when your trying to shoot some one :)

[nobrainer 0]

There seems to be some refusal to upgrade...still more than half of the public serves online run 1.57...!

Yes, we can't upgrade before all our members have 1.59.

That means Steam has to push some upgrades out.

Not all our members do "enjoy" patching manually.

It might be the same for others communities out there. Some also might not want to upgrade, though I don't know why. But we need all our members to play, so thats why we don't upgrade. Just upgraded our test server.

[Thats_Life 2.0 10]

@Dwarden

@thats_life_2.0

then please create CIT bug report ticket and include screenshots / video (e.g. YT)

so if more people have it they can see it/compare and we analyse

Before I do that I want to show you this video. ATOC = 0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cujmb2cu3x8

Is this normal? Otherwise I make a CIT for nothing ;)

On all the arma2 islands I have this problem. Esspecially on the leaf trees. The cristmas tree is more normal.

With OA the trees are looking better.

Is it something ingame? Because witch other patches I didn't have these problems.

And what's up with that flickering at the start from the first video?

Let me know if I still need to make a CIT.

Specs below..

Thats_Life 2.0

Edited April 4, 2011 by Thats_Life 2.0

[Dwarden 1125]

First off the disabling of alt+F4 has proven to be anoying, the 'feature' is a downgrade rather than upgrade,

first off, push esc then alt-f4 ... how simple ...

it's definitely an improvement to prevent incidental close or safeguard new users

---------- Post added at 18:52 ---------- Previous post was at 18:47 ----------

OK I've grabbed 30 seconds of footage from Tora Bora. No mods, just a single player in the editor. Pay attention to the small pines about 50m in front of the player. Notice how as I rotate +/- 15 degrees they start LOD switching. As I move closer to them, eventually they stop switching, and trees further in the distance do it instead.

I've uploaded the fraps video converted to an mpeg4 avi with mencoder under linux.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20189225/torabora2.avi

I'm working on finding out which betas are OK, will post that shortly.

now it would be perfect to make this into CIT bug report ticket! :cool:

how? read: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=102991

---------- Post added at 18:58 ---------- Previous post was at 18:52 ----------

again if you have tree or grass texture issues then please try disable or fiddle with AToC setting

example and description of values on BIKI: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg

[ricoadf 0]

first off, push esc then alt-f4 ... how simple ...

it's definitely an improvement to prevent incidental close or safeguard new users

I tryed alt-f4 on main menu and it didnt work, so assumed it was everywhere. Alt-f4 is a standard close program command, so most gamer's should know what it is. I have been playing since OFP came out and have never accidently closed nor known anyone to do it, so the safeguard is more harm than good imo (as it makes it hard to quickly close the game if it black screens or otherwise buggs out)

Thanks for the links to the settings config.

[purepassion 22]

first off, push esc then alt-f4 ... how simple ...

it's definitely an improvement to prevent incidental close or safeguard new users

Thats so true!

Freelook and F4 happens quite often.. In my point of view it is an improvement!